A personal story brought up by Google Cardboard

My colleague brought his Google Cardboard to work today and I finally had a chance to play with it. One of the apps I tried was the virtual tour of Versailles. As expected, the app allows you to view the interior of the castle in 360 degree, it changes perspectives as you turn and tilt your head. The app is pretty basic but it brought back one of my childhood memories.

Since I started 3rd grade, my mum subscribed a couple of science magazines in the hope of cultivating my curiosities in science. To be honest I was never into those magazines because they were beyond my age or I was too lazy to understand how things work. When I got those magazines from the mailbox, I usually skimmed through them, quickly read the parts that interested me and put them away. Among all the content, I was always interested in the parts when they talk about what the future would be like.

So one day as I was quickly going through a magazine, I found out they were collecting ideas and drawings of future life from kids all across the country. Deeply intrigued, I spent an entire night designing and drawing a device and submitted my ideas to the magazine the next day.

The device was built for virtual reality tourism: you put that device in a big room, select a location you want to visit, and it will automatically project your chosen location in the room. You will feel as if you are in your travel destination. At the same time the device tracks your body movements, so the projection will change as you move and turn your body. In addition, the device will give voice guidance as your tour around. In short, the device allows you to visit anywhere in the world within a room.

After a while I received a handwritten thank you mail from the editor praising my ideas and courage.

Almost 20 years have gone by and the device is no longer futuristic. If we would build that device today, we could probably build a prototype very easily. For travel destination, we could use assets from Google Map/Google Earth. For body tracking, Microsoft Kinect would be the obvious choice. For image projection, Microsoft’s RoomAlive technology would do a decent job or we can simply just put that in a VR device like Oculus Rift. For tour guidance, Siri, Cortana and Wikipedia would serve as our comprehensive tour guide.

So this memory really got me start thinking about a couple of things (I apologize for not grouping them logically, they are just my natural thinking):

• Most ideas are not new but it takes time for technologies to catch up. My device was not new and I am certain it was deeply influenced by all the cartoons I watched. The building block technologies I described, body tracking, room projection, voice-over all existed 20 years ago in very rudimentary forms. It took at least 15 to 20 years for them to evolve and became mature enough. So if you plan to build something “new”, it won’t hurt to take a look at the ideas proposed 10 to 20 years ago.
• Sometimes our passions are well formed in the early phase of our life. Up to these days I am still obsessed with latest technologies and how they will serve us in the future. These behaviors have been well formed in my brain since I was a kid. If you don’t know about your passion, try looking back into your childhood, seeking for moments that still have clear images in your head.
• As kids, we all have visions of what the future will be like and how we want that to be. However as time goes by and life happens, most of us have chosen not to use that part of our brains, while very few of us keep inventing and creating the future they have foreseen. There’s no right or wrong here. They are simply choices. I personally would rather not to lose the curiosities. Instead, stay hungry, and stay foolish.
• Be fearless. As a 9-year-old I had no concept of quality writing and drawing; all I wanted to do was to get my ideas out and expressed myself honestly. I wouldn’t call that a success but it gave me some courage to move forward. As we grow up we tend to be more afraid of failures, become more risk-averse and eventually procrastinate. Most of the times these fears are artificial and illusional, one should just go ahead and start doing things you always want to do. Like Mark Twain once said, “All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.”

Alright, enough with my ramblings.